Flavors of Spain at the DCMF

John-Andrew Fernandez, baritone, didn’t just sing Siete canciones populares españolas by Manuel de Falla, he acted them out. With Fermin Maria Álvarez’ La Partida, the Delaware Chamber Music Festival audience was his.

Pablo Zinger was the perfect collaborative pianist for the Spanish program.

Navarra by Pablo de Sarasate was breakneck for two violins and piano – no problem for duo Hirono Oka and Barbara Govatos and Pablo Zinger.

Oka and Govatos joined Burchard Tang, viola and John Koen, cello for Teresa Carreño’s String Quartet in B Minor and La Oracion del Torero by Joaquin Turina – giving Delaware a taste of music truly off the beaten path.

See www.dcmf.org

Ladies First at the DCMF

The Delaware Chamber Music Festival devoted their June 26 concert to Sylvia Glickman, pianist, composer and advocate for women’ music who died in 2006.

Charles Abramovic played Glickman’s Dances and Entertainments with insight and gave singular character to each vignette.

Glickman would no doubt have applauded the commission the DCMF gave Ingrid Arauco, an associate professor at Haverford College.

Divertimento is “light, not long for a summer evening. You can look at the pieces as five little experiments, five little essays,” said Arauco. Frank Ferraro played his trumpet delicately, giving Barbara Govatos, violin and Yumi Kendall, cello ample room for dynamic variation and expression.

See http://www.dcmf.org/.

Newark Arts Alliance

On June 23, a visit to the Newark Arts Alliance finds Nancy Breslin having finished a session on Artist Self-Promotion and Doortje Shover raving about it.

 

Terry Foreman has this as one of myriad activities she manages to run in the leanest of times.   “We still have Camp Imagine, but we have cut all the fat,” she said. 

 

The NAA has more than just visual arts – they have open mike poetry nights, acoustic jams, music performances, children’s writers groups and even fibers and embellishment groups.

 

A courageous organization championing art for all is well worth the visit. 

 

See www.newarkartsalliance.org.